I know a lot of players are complaining about the enchantment system in Minecraft, especially in PvP settings. I have a "radical fix" to the main complaints, but I'd like to hear your opinion on the subject.

First of all, the randomness of enchanting is here to stay. You will not be allowed to pick and chose your enchantments. This is to maintain Notch's "gambling" vision for enchantments, and I'm going to try to keep it that way.

The "radical fix" I'm considering is to simply reduce the max level from 50 to 30. This would mean that 1) it will take much less time to reach max level and 2) the good enchantments are less good (a thing PvP players have complained about). Some of the enchantment types would need new levels to fit this system, of course, but that shouldn't be too hard to do.

The reason I'm asking the reddit community is because this is a feature that I, as a game developer, only can see from a theoretical standpoint. It's very hard for me to dedicate enough time to actually suffer the drawbacks of the enchantment system, so I need some help from the experts on the subject - players of the game!

Cheers,

// Jens

EDIT: Wow! I expected comments, but not 900+ comments =) Thanks for all the input, there are a lot of thoughtful comments in this thread. You are very helpful!

Yeah, no kidding. Every legit survival base, single-player or multi-player, I’m looking for a dungeon or a mineshaft first, knowing I’ll eventually need an XP grinder to help getting more diamonds, coal and redstone for my projects (Fortune pick).

And the gambling aspect should be better communicated. As of now you put in your tool and it comes out enchanted with no animation, fanfare or suspense built up. Just a little animation illustrating the random rolling of enchantments would make things more interesting.

EDIT: how could I forget: Show us the % chances we have for getting certain enchantments! When we know the odds it will feel more like we're actually playing with them. Also, check this suggestion, because a lot of it is quiet good.

We need high level mobs, like the red dragon Notch promised. Something weaker than the final boss, but still a major challenge and which provides a lot of exp. Perhaps ~25 levels compared to ~100 for the Ender Dragon.

Nice, but XP Bottles are too weak. Before enchanting was unlimited on Creative mode, I had to build a machine with 9 dispensers and a clock throwing XP at me so I could test high-level enchantments.

For XP Bottles to be usefull they need to add a fixed PERCENTAGE of XP. Each bottle should give 20%-50% of a level. Don't matter if you are level 1 or level 40. It would fit the ever-so-expensive way that leveling works. Maybe.

Perhaps make a slider to choose which level the enchantment is at. It's really time consuming to have to keep dropping and picking up the item to change the enchantment levels. And torches on bookshelves removes me from the experience of the game.

Make enchanting tables more like furnaces. You pick the level at which to enchant (outcome still random, ok) without having to clicky-clicky-click, and item will 'bake' for an amount of time commensurate to the enchantment level.

Give us a disenchant mechanism that doesn't incur a 100% item replacement cost, please. Want to make it expensive/annoying? Make it another slow furnace-type block that requires rare materials to craft.

Across-the-board XP buff or nerf of XP requirement curve. At least in PVP-SMP, everyone wants high level enchants. Don't force people to waste hours and hours to get these enchants.

Lets say you really want a Fortune III enchant, well you only get it about 1 in 5 times when you put 50 levels into a diamond pick, and it takes you about 10 hours work to get 50 levels, you looking at like, 50 hours of time on average to get it.

This is just crazy, considering that you can lose tools easily depending on the situation. Plus it almost pushes player to exploit the game mechanics to save time, i.e. building mob spawning system to mass farm exp orbs to cut down on time.

And what about more casual players? Some people don't put too much time into the game and often enough with new patches a lot of people just abandon old worlds to get worlds with whatever new stuff gets added, thus essentially losing any of their previous efforts.

Maybe if you want it as an option you could make it so enchants are harder or easier to get? I.e. difficult mode enchants would be as they as, takes 50 levels, or normal mode might be 30 levels for equivalent to 50, or even easy mode requiring only 20?

I know a lot of people are irritated by the necessity of building mob farms to get xp, but I rather like it-- it encourages players to invest in infrastructure. I feel like part of Minecraft maturing as a game entails the developers anticipating this sort of player-built infrastructure and making it so that the process of building infrastructure is fun and immersive.

Looking up a tutorial on youtube and idling at it is neither fun nor immersive--it's actually incredibly immersion breaking, since the dispersion of mob encounters becomes highly controlled and predictable. Building contraptions is one of the best parts of the game, but mob darkrooms aren't all that complex, they're just large.

I don't have much to add, but I'd just like to encourage you because I totally agree with you.

I understand that some people enjoy using giant mob farms, but it shouldn't be necessary to experience specific parts of vanilla Minecraft.

Even if I'm gung-ho about exploring caves and smiting enemies, I haven't naturally gotten my exp level above 10 or so. It's crazy because that level isn't really even past the point where you get different stuff from level one.

I could build a mob farm, but I shouldn't have to exploit the mob spawning mechanism just to partake in a basic portion of the stock Minecraft experience.

I've always liked the ideas people have had about finding books or something from chests that would facilitate enchanting. To keep the "gambling" aspect how about books that would remove enchanting options? For example, you say find a book that corresponds to "bane of arthropods," so when you enchant your awesome max level sword you have 0 chance of getting this one particularly disappointing enchantment. Only one book should be active at a time, meaning you are limited in how you can affect your luck. Of course, this enchantment suppressing books would have random distributions, but some rare ones might cover two enchantments at once, covering multiple bases.

But what if you find a "fortune" book? Useless right? No one wants to prevent fortune on a pickaxe. Well, with the new trading system you could use librarians to trade for new books or emeralds.

I would have to agree, getting to such high levels can take a lot of time and effort, even with mob traps, so it can be a right pain once you have achieved such a high level to sit around constantly clicking, waiting to see that such desired number 50.

A slider would be a good addition, I mean it takes a while to get level 50, then to keep dropping the item in the box repeatedly is a thing that needs work on. Then once enchanted whether it be a terrible enchant or not, you have to repeat the process all over to get 50 again, it can be very tedious IMO.

This is my biggest peeve with the enchanting system. There is no cost to trying to get different levels, so the randomized-levels minigame is nothing but a clickfest time sink. Either make it so that trying for a different set of levels has some form of cost, or just allow any level in the allowable range to be selected.

Agreed. The randomness of the enchanting doesn't bother me, its the randomness of the level selection. If I'm level 50, I'm going to wait until I get a lvl50 enchant. But it takes FOREVER. Being able to simply choose how many levels I want to spend and then spin the wheel to see what I'll get would solve it for me and seems to keep all the randomness that actually matters.

Vote of agreement on the former. Trying to nail a specific level enchantment can be immensely tedious.

I've mixed feelings about the latter. Bookshelf adjustment is mildly annoying, but I really like the piston-based contraptions people design for it. I see that they're a workaround to a somewhat kludgy mechanic, but they're kind of an elegant workaround that I'd be sad to see gone, if that makes any sense.

The question on this one would be whether they're getting to the stage of the minecart boosters, whereby people enjoy the freedom and complexity of the workaround, and are willing to sacrifice the time on what is usually a trivial mechanic. Replacing them made making new tracks easier, but you lost the complexity of the problem.

For me, one of the biggest problems I feel about the system is not so much the levels or the enchantments themselves but the methods that must be undertaken to get them.

The only real way to get high levels of enchantments in an efficient manner is building grinders and traps, requiring the player to exploit certain aspects of the game and environment in ways that seem to run counter to fluid gameplay.

When you and the team were designing the XP system, I highly doubt that you intended the player to have to regularly go AFK for extended periods of time, several times in a row, with a significant lag penalty when done on an SMP server. This isn't how everyone does it but is very common and has inspired a major dimension of Minecraft culture. Yet this seems nuts: thousands of players have got used to a core part of their gameplay experience being to find something else to do while 'playing' Minecraft.

I'm not sure exactly of the right solutions to this but I think this is a major flaw in the system and hope you can appreciate my view.

Edit: One possible solution would be to offer ways that help maintain your level of achievement following initial investment. My super awesome sword makes killing more efficient but I get the same level of XP as a drop. Why not have it so high enchantments have a chance of dropping higher XP too? Or a rare enchantment for a Pick Axe that gives you a little bit of XP from mining as well as from mobs? The options for obtaining XP need to be broader, meaning that the cost penalty for a random, bad enchantment doesn't feel so drastic. Leveling up in other games means a permanent modification to your avatar; with Minecraft, one bad accident can potentially vaporize weeks of personal development and reset you completely to zero.

One other point is that there is no real way to get XP by mining/farming/exploring. I understand now you can trade with villagers to get some XP, but I have not had time to do that yet.

ps: I said to a co-worker today that you are doing good with the game. Trading and ender chests take away some of my urge to cheat. I'd like to explore potions and enchanting but I don't know how to do that without a mob grinder or cheating.

I actually just did an edit to my post before your comment suggesting XP from mining. Mining is the core of the game, or at least is supposed to be. One possible, rare enchantment for Pick Axes would be that you get XP from mining when using it.

I think that the trading for Bottles of Enchanting is a good move, providing an alternative avenue for converting invested time & effort.

I play on a server that has enabled XP from mining: Lapis, Redstone, Coal, Obsidian, and Wheat.

It actually feels really intuitive. You go mining for a while, you explore the underground world that you otherwise would only spend time in to acquire diamonds, (and in Minecraft eventually everybody ends up with a ton of diamonds, so they stop mining as much, taking away the "mine" from Minecraft), and you can come back with 15 or 20 or 30 levels to put onto some armor or whatever you feel like.

And suddenly things like Farming that normally feel a little worthless, have an extra little boost. Not enough to really grind from farming, but enough to make it like "Ooh, I'll go pick these crops" rather than "Meh, some more wheat."

Tried a mod that gives xp for mining blocks (expminer). Configured so you got 1 orb for 20 blocks of cobble/dirt/sand and a couple orbs for each diamond/gold. This completely removed the need/desire to farm spawners. Also tried a mod that allows you to store/bank levels in a sign. This was awesome but obviously every 3 levels you bank and go get more so it was a little cheaty. It feels like the levels are more of a currency you use to buy good gear than something making you better at skills or adventuring. It might be worth looking at it more like a currency where you need to get 100 orbs to get a "level/coin" regardless of level you obtain. Then you can bank them or not loose them when you die. At the moment when you start racking up levels I find myself playing all carebear and it becomes less fun. This has led me to make a spawner to farm or just forget about getting levels at all and just go build. Perhaps selling your levels for coins (or something) that you can then store up to buy random enchants might be worth looking at.

One other point is that there is no real way to get XP by mining/farming/exploring.

Maybe there could be two parallel XP-like systems: one obtained through mining, and the other obtained through combat. But combat XP would only be applicable to mining-related enchantments, and vice versa—so in order to keep leveling up, you’d have to regularly alternate between different types of gameplay.

Possibly, I just popped this out a couple of minutes after first commenting so I'm not saying to implement this exactly. The permanent modification to your avatar certainly fall under your concern, so perhaps not a good idea.

However, with my first suggestion of enchantments that give a little bit of XP, I don't see it as being so much more of a rich-get-richer scenario than already exists. If I join a server where existing players own Fortune picks, diamond armor, personal XP farms and the like they already have a huge advantage over me. They quickly get more of the good stuff once they reach these goals already. Adding the ability to gain XP from mining for example - as a high level reward - just seems an extension of this hierarchy.

The difference being that the results of their labor do not feed back into themselves. Once they have an XP farm, they get a linear (if very high) amount of XP. You can't farm enough XP to make your XP farm produce more XP.

I pretty much agree with this but there is something else that has been bothering me.

Why is there a leveling curve? It doesn't make sense for this kind of system. It lets you "waste" experience by leveling past the max enchantment level. Why not just have a solid rate for experience required per level gain instead of it requiring more exp for every level. It would make sense if leveling made you stronger but it doesn't, you just trade it in like currency. So there's really no reason that there should be an experience curve.

If there is some reason that I'm missing then someone please correct me but otherwise I don't see why it should require more experience to level up each level.

I totally agree, there have to be more ways of getting exp, besides reducing the level to 30. There is a mod, which name I cannot remind myself of right now, but it awards you with exp for exploring, mining etc. That would be very nice to have :)

Perhaps it could be broken down the amount of xp it took to go from level 50 to 51 and just give you that much xp after the enchantment to get you to whatever the appropriate level would be.
Note: I haven't played since full release and haven't enchanted but I still keep up with things here. Can't wait for more free time to get back in the game.

So the enchantment itself REQUIRES a certain level of experience attained, but only costs a quantitative amount of XP.

Fortune III: Level 25/200 XP (minimum level/cost of enchantment)

Whatever the cost is subtracts from the overall amount of gained XP which, in turn, affects your level. This, to me, seems a lot simpler than what others are suggesting. Simple change, powerful result.

Maybe the enchantment table can show levels, but only takes away that amount of levels of experience.

Ex. Say you were level 100 and wanted to enchant something that was level 50.

Total Experience = 1.75[Level]2 + 5.00[Level] (Source wiki)

Using this formula, at level 100, you should have 18,000 xp. If you want to enchant something at level 50, it should take away 1.75(502) + 5(50) xp, or 4,625. This would leave you with 13,375 xp (level 86). Does this sound more reasonable?

This is exactly the number one problem for me: If I take the time to reach level 50, I feel forced to enchant exactly on level 50, because it will waste a lot of XP if I enchant on, say, 49. This is the core problem with people complaining about clicking a 101 times to get level 50 show up. This can be fixed by either:

giving the player ability to choose the exact level to enchant

keeping the leftover experience (in therms of XP, not levels)

This can also be somewhat alleviated by making the level-up curve less steep.

One way to help alleviate this could be to flatten the XP curve a bit. As it is, it takes ~7 times as long to go from 40-50 as it does to go from 0-10. The XP system could benefit from making lower levels more difficult to achieve than they currently are, and making higher levels easier to achieve than they currently are.

when you put an item into the enchanting slot, have an option to scroll through the levels (1-30, or 1-50). the enchantment would still be random, but would fix having to spend a long time just getting to the wanted level. also, experience curve nerf

Yeah, keep the gamble-- just let us pick the pick the price we're willing to spend.

The current system is like going to the checkout-line at a store while clutching a money bag full of cash, and yet holding up the line to fumble for the correct change while blindfolded.
(And yes, the experience is tortured as this metaphor).

Anyway, if you wanted selective levels to be a more advanced feature for accomplished players, maybe only a complete set of bookshelves allow for "level scrolling."

I fully agree. As an example of this, one can look to the Reddit Survival PvP server (s.nerd.nu) where the amount of experience each mob drops has been multiplied by 7. Effectively this balances the pvp by allowing everyone to afford high level enchantments without grinding endlessly.

For instance, in 2-3 hours of caving in an abandoned mineshaft, I can get up to level 40 or higher, whereas before I would only be pushing 20. Now this much of a buff is probably too high for vanilla minecraft, but the fact remains that simply increasing the rate of acquiring experience will discourage sitting in front of a grinder, and encourage "normal" play i.e. exploration and the like. As far as I can tell, it's the simplest way to balance pvp on multiplayer.

It's kind of a catch 22 situation - a classic some pray for sun, others prefer the rain type thing. PVP'ers will want a system which it'll be easier to get these high-end enchants because it'll mean the game will stay balanced, and there isn't just one guy going around killing people. Classic survival players want difficult/special enchantments that are harder to get, for a sense of achievement when finally getting it. That's what makes it so problematic.

So far the best solution, from sifting through the comments, to satisfy both companies, seems to be, rarer enchantments that reflect the levels put in (for classic survival - maybe super rare enchants?), and, perhaps re-examining the experience curve (for PVP'ers).

Not everyone uses Mob grinders to get XP. Not everyone feels they HAVE to have the best enchants all the time. That was point. Some people play survival and just enjoy what they get. Of course PvP people think they have HAVE to get the best enchantments. Because you are assuming the enchanting system was made for PvP. Its not balanced because its not built around PvP.

I was about to comment this man, making it lvl 30 will just reduce the difference in weapons which is pretty cool, also , if pvpers complain about high level enchantments the people must have spend enough time to get these levels so you could do that 2. If they have the time to get it, you should be able to do so too.

How about instead of just nerfing the curve... straighten it out? So each level requires the same amount of experience. Level 1 would have to be worth considerably more than it is now, but going from 49 to 50 wouldn't be completely unreasonable.

You'd still have plenty of reason to avoid dying with a lot of experience if you tune it right, but people would actually have a shot at max level enchants without an xp grinder. As it stands now, no one lives that long while killing that many mobs. One creeper when you're not at full health will see to that, so the top levels in the current system are pretty much unavailable.

I agree with this. But I also think that you shouldn't lose so much XP when you die. Personally, I think you shouldn't go down any levels of XP when you die. Instead, say you're level 20 and have half a bar of XP, when you die you lose the half bar and go down to being just level 20. Enchanting should be the ONLY thing that can make you lose XP levels.

This would mean you could accumulate much more XP over time, without losing it every time you die.

Also, perhaps get rid of the XP orbs and give XP to the player simply for the kill. This would mean you could still get XP for kills with the bow, and other players couldn't try and steal the XP from your kills.

I think one of the main problems with the enchanting system is that through normal gameplay (not using grinders) it is very tedious to get enough XP for good enchants. Even level 30 would take ages. I would suggest more ways of getting XP such as:

Mining

Every block you mine gives you a little XP (not nearly as much as killing mobs)

The amount of XP received depends on the rarity of the block mined (So cobblestone won't give very much, but diamond gives alot)

Crafting

Option 1 - Every new item you craft gives you more XP (emphasis on "new" item to keep people from abusing it.)

Option 2 - The amount of XP recieved depends on the amount of time since you last crafted the item.

Edit1:

Repairing

The amount of XP received depends on the amount of damage each item has. The more damage the more XP.

Exploring

Option 1 - you gain XP for walking certain distances.

Option 2 - keep track of which chunks each player has visited and when a player enters a chunk he hasn't visited before, he gets XP.

Edit2:

Achievements

Destroying Mob Spawners

Trading with Villagers

Enchanted Tools that drop XP instead of blocks, more XP for better blocks like diamond

But... a large portion of Minecraft can be very boring and repetitive. If you choose so.

It's less about ease of acquisition and more about lack of options.

Even then, the serious players will all still likely gravitate to the most efficient method, which will still likely be blaze grinders. It will just take a much shorter time to get the enchanting level you want with Jens' proposed change to the cap. 1-30 takes less time than 40-50.

Achievements also should give you experience. It would give them a real power in the game, as they are currently useless. Trust me, gaining XP by riding a pig and falling a cliff would really not be boring.

You're missing the point somewhat; if players can earn XP through pretty much everything they do, they can just play the game and steadily earn XP without having to specifically grind for it.

Yes, there will be exploits, but honestly why would most players bother with them when they can be having fun and earn XP anyway. Yeah, grinding is faster but overall it's more time-consuming than just playing the game, considering that playing involves entertainment!

Designing the mob grinders might be fun, but it's in no way fun to use one. For a mechanic that was meant to bring more adventure into the game, enchantments and experience gain has been raped by Mob Grinding.

I see a problem with crafting – it would basically mean every player going through every possible recipe (with wiki, or a long cheatsheet) to get easy XP. However, crafting has its own reward mechanic – achievements. So just give people substantial XP for them. (And by extension, add more achievements and stop requiring us to complete a stupid tech tree to unlock more powerful achievements) You could cheat with single-player, but on SMP the server could just keep track of achievements for every player.

I agree. I don't play PVP, and I really don't do much building. I'm primarily a miner and explorer, and I'd like to have the ability to gain the xp I need for enchants from the activities that I enjoy. I like getting it from killing mobs since I spend a lot of time spelunking, but getting it from mining would be great. It might even be fun to be able to destroy a mob spawner for a a nice big chunk of xp which would reward people who find mob spawners without making them set up a grinder.

Maybe for the mining thing there could be a pickaxe enchantment that drops XP from blocks instead of whatever you would normally get. And of course it would be proportional to how rare the block is. I think that could be cool. Stone probably shouldn't drop any XP though, only ores. That way you have to actually look for it instead of using a stone generator (just a new type of grinding, easier than the first).

In addition, since dreaming is harmless, I would actually love to get exp individually from the usage of different skills.

So, for instance, exp that you get from mining can be applied only to pick-related enchantments. Similarly, exp that you get digging would apply only to shovel-related enchantments. Killing mobs would allow you to get sword and bow enchantments.

This would add another layer of complexity to the game. It does not have to be boring and repetitive, as this can be addressed through adequate balancing. It would also eliminate the problem of players grinding for exp in a grinder to get better tools, which would benefit SMP. It may not necessarily solve the PvP issue, but this could be addressed in other ways (e.g., reducing the amount of levels needed or increasing the amount of exp gained from mob kills).

Jeb, I emailed a suggestion a while back. I posted it on Reddit once and it got some very positive feedback. It doesn't fall in line with your "no selecting enchantments" rule, but it does leave in an element of randomness. Here it is again.. if nothing else, maybe you can get some ideas out of it.

Each enchantment type also has its own enchantment level like it currently does (e.g. Unbreaking I, II, III), but you don't get to choose it.. it's calculated by your success rate. The level you get depends on the enchantment's base success rate, your EXP level, how many enchantments the tool currently has.

It would be possible to choose Fortune if you were only at EXP level 1, and it would be possible to get a Fortune enchantment, but the chances would be low, and would be significantly lower for Fortune II and III. Improbable, but possible. Say, a 1-3% chance of landing Fortune III at level 1.

The higher your experience level, the higher your success rate.

You do not spend your experience points enchanting. You keep them.

If your enchantment is a success, you receive the enchantment, and you are able to attempt to stack another enchantment on top. Each time, you risk damaging your item, and each time the success rate goes down a little bit.

If your enchantment fails, your pickaxe breaks or its durability is degraded. You never lose your experience points, you can only lose materials. You can immediately try again if you have more materials to use or if your item still has enough durability. You also have the option of repairing your failed/degraded item.. see below.

Here's where it gets interesting. If you end up with a good enchanted item and you don't want to lose it, or your 4th enchantment attempt failed and your item degraded, you may spend your experience points on repairing an the item at the enchantment table.. which in turn will lower your overall success rate (to ensure a balance here, only items with full health can be enchanted). For example it may cost 3000 EXP to repair an enchanted pickaxe to from 1%-100% health (roughly level 30). This could and should scale with how well-enchanted your item is. You now have a choice to make.. repair an item and spend your XP, or keep your XP for higher success rates on future enchantments?

You don't spend "levels", you spend the actual experience points that determine what level you are.

Killing the ender dragon would be very rewarding. With all the exp, you'd have a chance to repair your best enchanted items and/or significantly increase your success rates for new enchantments. A perk you'd expect after defeating the "final boss".

In addition to that, you can find enchantment recipes scattered around the world. You do not know what the recipe contains until you bring it to an enchantment table to decode it (now with editable books, these books could have the recipe in the cryptic language used by the enchantment table). These enchantment recipes ensure a 100% success rate, and the enchantments in the recipe are completely random. Your recipe could contain "Sharpness I", or it might contain "Fortune III and Efficiency IV". What you get in your recipe is chosen at random, with better enchantments being more rare.

Recipes are:

Found in mineshaft chests

Found in strongholds

Found in nether fortresses

Found in chests buried in beach sand.

Recipes are common, but good recipes would be rare.

They are stackable until they are decoded at an enchantment table, so you don't fill up your inventory with recipes while out mining.

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I don't know how to do nested bulleted lists on reddit, sorry for the ugly formatting.

There are some excellent ideas here; much nicer than the current system while still offering a degree of randomness. I've seen numerous posts regarding finding enchantments in books and the like and it's a great idea.

I'm amazed none of the top 6 posts here are about your "radical fix." You say it will take less time to reach max level and the good enchantments won't be quite as good. But right now you have the choice to only level up to 30, it takes less time, and the good enchantments aren't quite as good. For most players, this is great because if they want stronger enchants, they can just level up some more.

The only people that would benefit from this change are PvPers, who, while I'm sure they make up a decent percentage of Minecrafters, shouldn't be the only reason for nerfing the enchantments so drastically. I love my fortune III tools, my power V bow, my unbreaking III axe. And I'm a survival single-player kind of guy, I think it would be a bummer if those were taken away just because the PvPers don't like them. Seems to me like it would be better (and simpler) just to make it so enchantments don't affect PvP combat, or a level III enchantment does the same as a level I enchantment in PvP combat.

IMO, there shouldn't be some way to choose specific enchanments, but there should be for level. If I grinded to level 50, I'd like to not spend 15-20 minutes waiting for level 50 to show up so I get the most from my levels.

This has probably all been said at this point, but I think it takes more than just that.

A little insurance that a high investment of experience will have a high payout -- perhaps there's some way of weighting so that low-level enchants at high-level costs are guaranteed to come grouped?

Explicit control over how much you gamble on the enchantment. Bookshelf sliders are frustrating, but should still influence the maximum you can invest, while a simple UI of up and down arrows could allow you to choose the number of levels you want to risk, with three options still provided.

Some way of trading in or buffing enchantments. My personal preference would be something like an obsidian anvil that allows you to manipulate enchanted items as enchanted. You could shatter an enchanted item for a portion of the experience required to create the enchants, or you could repair enchanted items while maintaining their enchantments.

Basic Anvil idea: Three boxes, one for input, one for repair material, and one for output. INPUT is designed to receive Enchanted items. If INPUT and REPAIR are both filled appropriately (same tool type in Repair as in Input), OUTPUT will produce a clone of INPUT with the same repair algorithm used to repair tools normally. If INPUT has an enchanted item and REPAIR is empty, OUTPUT will produce a stack of "bottle o' enchanting" items based on a calculated minimum cost to produce the INPUT's current enchantments -- this should only produce a small part of the cost, but it allows some return from a bad bet.

A way to create the bottle o' enchanting and safeguard your experience. This could be as simple as adding a new function to the enchanting table that allows the player to place an empty bottle and it will consume either 11 XP (if that's possible) or 1 Level to create a bottle o' enchanting. This is still a gamble, as bottles, according to the wiki, drop 3-11 orbs when broken, meaning you will often have a loss of experience, despite being able to safeguard a large amount of it by making bottles regularly.

If you're going to cap at 30, that's fine, but please make it so that we don't have to click the enchantment table incessantly until we spend the right number of levels.

The result is random anyway, so this in no way detracts from the gambling nature of enchantments. When you go to a casino, you choose how much to bet, you don't have to haggle with the employees to arrive at a dollar amount you want. This alone would be a huge relief to most players.

Ever since books were made to be editable I had an idea (since a completed book glows as if it were enchanted).

I think that there should be pre-written books that can be found in the environment.

These books would be written in the enchantment language and there would be a unique book for each enchantment. Perhaps these books would be obtained as the result of a boss fight or something. Anywho, moving on to their purpose.

These books would be enchantment books. Each book would be a different color to represent the enchantment, and the language would also be the same color as the book.

These books can be stored in bookshelves that are connected to an enchantment table in order to boost the chances of getting a particular enchantment. The letters flowing from the shelf would be the color of the book.

I think that these books should be extremely rare, and perhaps only have one of each in every world.

I'm wondering anyone thinks this is a good idea, if it would make enchanting more fun, or if it takes away from the system.

Personally I think this would encourage exploration and provide an exciting unique element to the game enough to spice up enchanting a bit.

When the enchanting system came out, the weapon damage was lowered to encourage it's use. A diamond sword prior did I think 5 hearts of damage, now it does 3.5 hearts.

It's very nice to be able to kill a creeper in two hits, if you're good, you can get in both hits before the timer hit's BOOM time (not every time, but enough to make caving with a diamond sword a must have).

If the enchantments are brought down in power, will the base damage on some of the weapons be brought back up?

Is this level max change also going to apply to every type of enchantment? or just weapons and armor? (I must admit to being addicted to Fortune III)

As well as this, the enchanting table interface needs fixing (assuming you're not already planning to overhaul it completely), by allowing you to select what level you wish to enchant at (providing you have the enough exp and booshelves), because there's nothing more fustrating and boring than having to click through pages and pages of enchantments looking for the one you want. Level 50 for example can take several minutes of clicking to find if you're unlucky.

True, but if you choose not to gamble, you can buy other things with money. Experience in MC has no other value except for enchanting, so you either gamble with a significant likelihood of getting a shitty enchant or just sit on the experience and gain nothing.

-make repairing use raw materials rather than another tool (ie 1 diamond repairs a third of a diamond pick) and then make enchanted items repairable at a greatly increased cost (ie one diamond repairs a sixth of a pick, maybe gold is more efficient)

-a slider to select what level to enchant at (up to the limit determined by bookshelves)

-be able to craft empty XP potions and then enchant them with your own XP, with some efficiency losses of course (ie put 20 levels in, get 15 out)

-be able to prepare items beforehand (craft them with a rare potion?) to alter the chances of getting a specific enchantment (ie make knockback more likely) without making it certain, and perhaps also reducing the chance of multiples

1) Randomness. Sucks balls, in enchanting and in the results.
2) Avaiability. You need a spawner (which btw increases lag horribly).
3) Stupidity. I have to grind 5 times to 30 just to go raiding? Really? ...

Lowering the max level seems good, but if it also lowers the power of enchatments, you would just get more rage. [BAD]

Enchantments have weaker effect on players (someone suggested here). Since you can identify the source of damage, looks like it's possible [BEST]

New splash potion that removes enchantments for X minutes. Made with lapis. Main use is on PVP. Maybe can be used on Survival if mobs get magical powers or something like that. Skeletons drops ecnhanted bow, why not use it? [GOOD]

Lower the max level and nerf some high-level enchantments, but add a new potion that can power up all enchanted gear equiped for X minutes. [?]

Add random downside to enchantments. You get Efficiency V? Nice, you also lose hunger points 3 times faster. Flame sword? You also have a 0.02% chance of burning. [GOOD]

On survival I think enchanting is almost good. The worst thing is getting a epic lame item for 50 levels. Even so, it's not too hard to fill a chest with nice gear (if you have a grinder, of course).

Those who don't know or don't want to build a XP farm already are at disavantage. They should get some compensation, like unique enchantments from quests or dungeons.

Yeah. That's the real problem here. In single player enchanting seems fine to me. The problem is when you play on a PvP server it is require to have the highest and best enchants to even have a chance.

Not all randomnesses are equal. I'm guessing Notch was going for a roguelike-ish "randomness" which would give you a given reward and force you to play the hand that you're dealt. This would be good if, say, you were rolling between a Fire Aspect, Freeze Aspect, and Sand Entomb Aspect sword. You put the points in, and you adapt your playstyle to what you got. The problem is, there are a lot of highly desirable, or altogether undesirable, or totally situational enchantments. Rolling between sidegrades is fine, but putting a lot of points in and getting screwed over is not, even if max level is reduced.

No one is asking for absolute choice, but one degree of guidance would be useful. Make the "enchatability" score of gold tools extremely high, such that they are the only tools that can receive utility enchants like Silk Touch, AquaAffinity, Respiration, etc. Those things that are not combat oriented. Leave the basic pick, armor, and weapon sidegrades to the diamond tier, with the tradeoff that gold weapons and armor can only get, say, Efficiency 2 or so. And obviously rework gold tools to be roughly equivalent to iron rather than made of tinfoil.

Really, Enchants like Unbreaking and especially Fortune III are an iffy idea to begin with, since they mess with resource availability. Just make diamonds more available in caves, rather than using two metalevels of enchanting to "extend" the diamonds. (Of course, if villager trading remains the way it is in the snapshot, then none of that really matters, since diamonds become trivial.)

Ok, after reading through some of the comments below, I've come up with and idea for an improved system.

First of all, I would NOT decrease the level cap for TOOLS. Having a greatly reduced level cap for weapons and armor, however, should be implemented, or else high level enchantments should have lessened effectiveness against other players. Second, I would greatly increase the XP that natural mobs drop. By natural, I mean mobs that have NOT been spawned from a spawner. Make the difference drastic enough that you going and killing naturally spawned mobs gains you about the same experience for a given time, or make it so that you are actually losing some time waiting for mobs to spawn from a grinder. If you want to get REALLY accurate about this, you could also make the XP a mob drops go down the more mobs are around it (say, in the chunk), to curb the effectiveness of dark-room spawners.

Third, I would greatly reduce the randomness of the enchantment numbers the crafting table gives you. Either through making the table more bookshelf-sensitive, or through a system where the last slot is always how many levels you currently have. I do not, however, want a slider in the enchanting screen, as I like the current GUI and I think it would look ugly and crowded (kind of like the new creative screen, in my opinion).

Also, I like the idea (as a few below have mentioned) of adding other ways to gain experience (through trading, etc.) and more enchantments to make the randomness a bit more exciting (I'm sure Reddit could help you come up with some more, if you need help! ;) ). Also, making it so that, for example, spending a level 50 enchantment when you have 51 levels results in same amount of experience left over, and not levels, would be very, very nice.

EDIT: Hopefully this gets seen, as it is on the bottom of over 600 comments.

I agree that the randomness in the enchantment you get, after you've chosen the enchantment + its level, should remain random.
However, I don't like how you have to repetitively place and take out your item in the enchantment slot until the level that you're looking for pops up. It's extremely mundane, and I don't think that kind of repetitiveness should exist in minecraft.

I personally think that some enchantments such as silk touch and fire aspect should have a higher probability rate. As of right now, it is exceedingly hard to get a good enchantment that you actually want.

The first time I got 45 levels, I got a Bane of Arthropods and Knockback. After all that hard work, I didn't feel like it paid off. However, I think that the levels are fine at 50 Maximum, it adds a bit of a challenge, although I do wonder, if you could make It less probable that you will get a Sharpness 5, and make it so that it is more likely you will get more enchantments, but lower leveled

Example:

45 Levels Now = Sharpness IV, Fire Aspect 1

45 Levels Future = Sharpness 3, Looting 2, Bane of Athropods 1

I also want Armor and Bows to get a durability enchantment, like Unbreaking. The worst feeling is when you lose a set of enchanted armor, and it can never be repaired.

This sort of stuff is always going to be complained about by PvP players, I think. It fits perfectly in singleplayer, and if both are altered like this that will just make another group unhappy. Perhaps buffing defensive enchantments on armor could help.

Other people have made good suggestions about how to make enchanting better and improve experience gains, but I think the system has a deeper issue. I feel that experience should not be tied to enchanting as a system.

They way the system works now, experience is just a currency with a limit, nothing more. If you made enchanting coins that you could only have about 100 of at a time and no way to store them, it would be the almost the same system. I have a suggestion to separate these systems that might help alleviate other issues (and probably cause new ones)

Enchanting:

Instead of using experience, sacrificing items is how you could get enchanting. It could easily keep the randomness. Have a tiered item list that corresponds with lvls as they are now. Wood block and wool - no enchantment. Gold bar - Iron Armor - level 5 enchantment, Ender Eye - Blaze Rod - Level 50 enchantments, or how ever it could balance out.

Experience:

Experience could be tied to giving the player some buff the higher it goes. Level 10, run faster, level 20, more stamina, so on and so forth. And instead of dropping it all when you die, it just resets. This would make a nice penalty for dieing that isn't a terrible, but still make death more risky and experience feel more like progression not just another currency.

These are just my ideas, but I think combination of enchanting/experience could be looked at.

Suggestion: Instead of reducing the max level, make experience go up twice as fast.

Also, the original purpose of experience was to make suiciding less useful. Because of this, there really should be some passive bonuses from experience, even if they are very minor ones. A small chance of very minor damage reduction would be my recommendation. (This also adds an extra tradeoff to the game - do I upgrade my tools, or keep the damage reduction?)

Cutting down the top end feels a little disappointing but would be OK — when I enchant I'm not out for maximizing Efficiency and whatnot, but for additional abilities like Fire Aspect and Silk Touch. If you added more variety and reduced the max power I would be happy.

My gripe with the enchanting system is that it is inefficient to use less than the maximum level you have (since e.g. a lv1 enchantment takes away more of your stored XP the higher level you have) — this causes me to fall into a pattern of either kill mobs/low enchant/kill mobs/low enchant/... or sitting at a grinder until level 50. (Let me note that I play Minecraft as an engineering game — building and using things like grinders is part of the fun, so please don't take such capabilities away, but waiting for half a RL day is less so.)

If the XP-to-enchanting-level ratio were flat, instead of exponential, then I could just play the game and “naturally” accumulate XP along the way, and do either low or high enchantments whenever I want to and have sufficient stored XP. There would still be significance in having a high level in that you lose most of it on death.

I also approve of the idea of getting XP for non-fighting activities — the one I would really like to see is exploring, especially exploring caves. As it is, I have very little motivation to explore near-surface caves in the late game since I have plenty of iron and valuable features like dungeons are scarce. Here's a possible realization: have an “XP plant” which is frequently generated in dark areas (like mushrooms!) and gives you XP when you harvest it, but never regrows. (It could react interestingly to illumination, perhaps, like dying immediately and dropping its XP, so you have to push on to harvest it).

A thing that itches me is the leveling progression. Going from level 0 to 1 is far easier than going from level 49 to 50. Yet, going from level 0 to 1 means infinitely more than going from level 49 to 50. As I understand it, having 49 or 50 levels accumulated does not really change what you can get. Yet, the first levels mean a lot!

A solution to this would be to smoothen the "required xp for next level" curve to be closer to a constant, and to make enchantments less random the higher the levels. This would also comfort players making a high investment into an enchantment.

The problem I have is that its too random, a level 50 enchantment can give you something that you can get a level 5. Maybe assigning a value to each enchantment levels and the total value of the enchantments must add up to the level?

From what I can gather there were two types of complaints: from OCD-must-have-best-item players that complained about the need to farm endlessly to gamble successfully, and from those that actually had valid PvP balance concerns. All hc factions servers I know nerf protection to 3 max because of that, for example. Why not make Weapons and armor deal/absorb different amounts of damage depending on if it comes from players or mobs?

Oh, and while you're here: what about "Infinity" instead of "Infinity I"? Basically every level I enchantment could lose the I in display.

Well we all hate when our enchanted equipment breaks, so how about if the tool is almost broken you can put it back in the enchantment table and repair it by using experience. I know you can repair tools, but if I am not mistaken you do not get the enchantments back.

While I can't comment on the power of upper-level enchantments and the overall maximum level, it would be nice if we could clear enchantments without repair, or re-enchant an already-enchanted item. This way if we spend 25 levels on our diamond sword and get looting I, we can at least spend another 25 to re-roll without having to make another diamond sword.

I'm all for decreasing the max enchantment level, but if the randomness is here to stay I wish Jens would consider biasing the table a bit so that the probabilities of the numbers near the player's level had a slight boost in likelihood. For example, if I had 50 levels and 30 bookshelves, and the normal probability of a level 50 enchantment appearing was 1%, then it would be raised to 2% or 3%. Anyone have a critique?

A slider wouldn't be bad but please don't make the game easier than it already is by putting the max level to 30. A lot of people already have grinders, it wouldn't make any difference but flood the servers with enchanted stuff.

Something I can't find any reference or comment regarding so far is that the very specific way an enchanting table must be set up is kinda lame; why can't we place bookshelves in a wider area, and in aesthetically pleasing formations, rather than in a square around our enchanting tables.

Minecraft has very few other examples of this restraining of building; maybe Nether portals... why do enchanting tables need to be set up a particular way?

As a player that only plays on hardcore pvp severs I've spent many hours afking at a mob grinder just for the small chance of getting that lucky enchant. I've mine stacks of diamond just to throw them away after getting some shitty enchant.

I know that you want to keep the enchantments random but can we get a disenchant option that would take away the enchantment that is on an items, give some of the exp from that enchant back, and allows the items to be once again enchanted.

This way i won't be going through stacks of diamond trying to get good enchants.

I like the idea of giving players more option then just mob grinding for exp but too me villagers would be close to useless. unless there is a common way to spawn villagers in a base the chance of finding a intact npc town without all the npcs killed is slim to none.

Also higher harder to get enchants are just plan old OP compaired to the lower enchants and potions. A player with full diamond can almost be one shot from a sharpness 5 sword. I feel like enchantments should not be much of a game decider in a pvp fight and should be nerfed so they would be just as helpful as lets say potions. Of course the pvp side of the game does need a lot of balancing but because this is about enchantments i can't really get into that.

At any time you have a number of progressively harder quests available

A quest consists of completing a quota of a task (from 1 upwards)

Completing a quest has an associated XP reward based on difficulty

Quests time out and are cycled at a speed based on their difficulty.

The easiest quests cycle multiple times a day and are things like "kill chicken".

The hardest quests probably last about as long as the lunar cycle and are things like "craft a squad of iron golems".

Behind the scenes quests have conditions for when they'll appear. You could get a quest to craft a wooden tool right at the beginning. Once you're very well equipped you could get a quest to go defeat the Ender Dragon.

Quests make the achievement system feel inadequate, so players will regularly need to give it pep talks.

In multiplayer games nearby players could have a chance to receive an identical quest which could be completed together with harder quests having a larger range and higher chance to be shared.

Ok so i have created an account on here just to make this post. i have not seen this posted or commented about as an idea yet, nor have i seen it as a mod.

The idea to enhance enchanting is this.

Make paper (or an item crafted using paper) enchant-able with a single enchantment that can be added to appropriate items at a later date.

say you have some xp but dont have that diamond sword yet but you have a piece of paper. you enchant it, and it gives you fire aspect 1, you go out mining and get more xp while at it. you come back and enchant another piece of paper. this one gives you bane of arthropods.

you then craft a your sword and combine it on a crafting bench (or enchanting table) with one of the enchanted paper (scrolls). then the other. giving you both the enchantments you want to put on your item.

this would help customization of weapons tools and armor while still having the random gamble of the enchanting table.

you can then stockpile enchantments for items or trade with other players on a multi player game. the XP is not then wasted on a junk item and people have more control over their abilities and a reason to keep going out for more xp.

yes this doesn't help the grind aspect of the acquisition of XP but it goes a long way to helping balance the system.

also then you have the option of adding these to stronghold/mineshaft/temple/bonus chests etc as a random item. once again adding to the lure of adventuring and mining on the world.

on top of that. one enchantment i would really like to see added is one for boots that allow higher jump height and/or run speeds.

A quick summary of what the mod does, for those who don't want to click through to the somewhat lengthy forums post:

Enchantment level costs are halved, but enchantment power remains the same. For instance, to put a level 50 enchantment on an item, the player need only spend 25 levels of experience. For a lv20 enchantment, 10 levels of experience, and so on. This differs from Jeb's proposal, which would reduce the maximum enchantment level and power by 40%.

Immediately after enchanting an item, if you are displeased with the result, you may reverse the enchantment for an 80% refund. (This damages the item.) Once the newly enchanted item is picked up, the enchantment is final and cannot be reversed.

Enchanted items can be repaired at enchanting tables using XP and an item of the same type. Items with multiple effects or stronger effects cost more XP to repair.

Reddit has no idea how to balance a game mechanic. They are all advising quick fixes that don't really make the game more fun, just easier. Enchanting is bad because it is way over powered. Players are capable of becoming demigods with an hour of grinding and then mobs are no challenge. Diamond used to be the max and even then you could still get killed, We need to get back to that sort of gameplay. The enchanting system itself is not really very good, and there are not enough enchantments that work with it. Having a slot machine for enchantments where one is categorically better does not make sense. More enchantments like feather falling, fire aspect, etc, which do very specific things, and less Protection, Sharpness, Knockback, which just make you become a tank.

I would like keeping the max level at 50, but make it so you can get it easier and that you have better chances of getting a good enchant. Cause as it is now, you feel acomplished when you reach level 50.

I agree that the max level should be decreased to 30, but there's simply not enough variety of enchantments for the 'randomness' to be fun. I think there needs be more exciting enchantments added too, maybe be a bit more adventurous in these snapshots instead of constantly worrying about balance, for a change. That way the community can have a say on what they think is fair or not.

Another thing to note is that there should be a factor that that improves the higher you level up; for example, at level 1 to 10 you can only get one enchantment on a single item, 11 to 20 you have a 2/3 chance of getting two enchantments, and at level 21 to 30 you have a 2/3 chance of getting a three level enchantment and a 1/3 chance of getting two (or something like that)

That's just my opinion on the subject, I hope it helped in some way.

EDIT: Also, I think that you should at least be able to choose how many levels you want to spend on enchanting, instead of clicking 50 times before getting the one you want.

The randomisation, or gambling enchanting, will only seem fair if the xp wasn't such a pain to gain.

If you want to keep the gambling aspect then make sure that if you spend a lot of xp on the item, that the enchants that it gives match the effort that went in to obtaining the enchant, even if the enchant is piss poor, such as bane of arthropods. What pours salt on to the wound is that it can give a really weak version of a terrible enchant in the first place, giving you no motivation to do it all again.

Perhaps have the best of both worlds, low level enchants are weak versions, but they enable you to select which enchant you want. Perhaps you can only select one enchant and it will be a maximum of [enchant] II. But for the higher level enchanting and multiple enchants on a single item, you need to use the gambling approach, which could pay off or kick you in the balls. At least then you don't feel totally deflated and don't feel that you never had a chance to get a good enchantment, if the offer to add a weaker but selective enchant was always available to you.

The only way the gambling system would please people is if it wasn't the end of the world if you spend all your xp to enchant an item, only to get something terrible. Even if there was a way to salvage even half the xp from an item would make it feel like less of a kick in the teeth.

I think the amazingly good enchants need to stay; if the players earn it they deserve it. If the PVP players complain, they can get an enchantment-nerfing plugin. I don't think the entire game needs to change to satisfy the PVPers.

Sorry to be anal, but can someone point me to where I can find details on "Notch's 'gambling' vision for enchantments"?

I just find it weird that once you have completed enchanting an item, why you cannot 'learn' it. It does seem like a waste of time for everyone, as a lot of players just throw away items with useless enchantments.

Maybe adding 'Enchantment recipes' would be better - maybe they could be hidden in strongholds, dungeons, etc?

Well grinding to level 30 is still less of a chore than grinding to 50 that's for sure. However, not to speak negatively about the good lord Notch's will, random chance of success is still random and it's bad game design. It's not the same kind of random of stumbling across diamond in an awesome cave either, more like "Oh you've done all this work, here is a some RNG to determine whether your efforts have paid off".

Obviously there's still lots of potential ideas and possibilities with enchantments, but the fact that there's a chance that you're wasting your time is what really annoys me (and many others) about it. One way around this (if taking the RNG out of it is out of the question) could be by simply adding a ton of useful/fun enchantments to balance out the frustration of getting something you didn't want for grinding away for hours.

The level 31 and above enchantments are great for PvM, but if there were maybe an option for servers to have a max level cap on enchanting built into the game (like the way we can change difficulty), that'd be awesome. Level 0 would mean no enchantments, of course.

First of all, the randomness of enchanting is here to stay. You will not be allowed to pick and chose your enchantments.

Ok, we understand. But there are two things here at play – picking enchantments and getting absolutely shit enchant at level 40. I think making tiers of enchantments (for example every 5 levels) and picking one of them at random, according to amount of experience spent is better than giving Silk Touch for 5 levels and Sharpness II for 40. So if you want to spend 30 levels, you have no idea what you’re gonna get, but you know that it won’t be Unbreaking I. More levels = more power. Fewer levels = less power.

What if enchanting was split into two systems: getting the base enchantment (only one enchantment at a time) and then leveling that enchantment up separately?

Let's say I was level 10 and spent those levels to enchant my sword. I got Smite I randomly. From there, I could either gain another 10 levels to upgrade my Smite I into Smite II, or I could chose to use those 10 levels to add a whole new random enchantment to my weapon.

So as long as you're at level 10 (or X level based on what the developers decide), you can get access to all enchantments. There's still a high level of chance, but it makes enchanting more incremental and removes the scenario in which users sink huge amounts of levels into an item and getting absolutely horrible luck.

I have an idea for a solution: There's no need to lower the xp values of current enchantments, but there should be an alteration in leveling. As the system is, and as others have brought out, going from levels 3 - 4 compared to 47 - 48 are a lot cheaper. The less XP you have, the easier it is to gain. The reason this is a problem is because players who save up XP for a long quantity of time for large enchantments are virtually forced to use mob-farming, which some feel takes away from the fun of the game. The only real solution, then, is to make it so that each XP level maintains the same amount of XP to achieve. I.e. To get from level 1 - 2 and to get from level 75 - 76 should take the same amount of mob-killing. This way, people are not forced to spend their XP the moment they get it, and the higher-up enchants are not way too expensive. The only way this system of it taking longer to get levels the higher you get would work is in an RPG, which MineCraft clearly is not.

I very much favor random enchantment results, so I'm happy to hear that. I deeply dislike the random level choices; catching the right level cost is perhaps the most tedious part of the game in my eyes.

I don't really have an issue with reduction of the max enchantment level or its ramifications, as long as my bookshelf/enchantment table setup can be symmetrical without superfluous bookshelves. But I only speak for myself.

If you're working on enchantments as well as the mechanics, might I suggest that higher levels of respiration would be useful? Additional aqua affinity levels that increase movement speed underwater would also be welcome.

In terms of PvP imbalance, Protection and sharpness are a bit too high-end. A fully enchanted (protection 4x4 + sharp V) player will win against any player who is not equally equipped. A skilled player in this gear could easily take down five or six equally geared players who were not using enchanted gear. An unskilled one will still make quick work of any two players.

Limiting enchants to 30 is a good idea - I would have no problem saying goodbye to fortune 3, protection 3 & 4, Sharpness 3-5 and bow power enchants. These generally either imbalance the economy or privilege players who have more time over the casual players. This levels the playing field considerably.

i hope you can "theme" your enchantments... like if its close to lava/nether items/fire there's a increased chance of fire based enchants and if it's near water/ice higher chance of aquatic affinity ect.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but how could Jeb even nerf a Mob Grinder? The mechanics that make it work are pretty straight-forward and universal, and you can't auto-seal drops or water-chutes of specific lengths or cause mobs to NOT spawn in large dark places/from Spawners.

To me it seems impossible, and that Mob Grinders are here to stay. Once Combat is more fun or rewarding than Grinding, then people would have more incentive to do it legitimately.

One suggestion; the number of rewards is determined by how much of the damage the Mob took from a Player before they died (and not the environment). Almost like if you were the one who hit the pinata more than any of the other kids, you get the most candy and experience. Since a Grinder does most of that work for you, your returns would be minimized from it's use.

I am a fan of a Slider on the Enchantment Table that allows you to select your desired Level of Enchantment, or at least a 5-level range. Endless clicking is just tedious, I want to get out there to build, mine and kill!

I think the problem with enchanting isnt so much the randomness, as it is that the randomness doesnt have a minimum value. Unless this has been changed since I last enchanted, if you enchant an item, actual enchantment level is randomly assigned between 0 (or 1?) and the calculated maximum. So even blowing 50 levels has a chance of returning a lvl 1 enchantment.

I think that while randomness is ok, even good, I also think the MINIMUM possible enchantment should scale with level too.

No-one on my server has bothered with enchanting in a very long time. When it came out it was cool and every one tried it, but eventually people grinded to level 30-40, enchanted an item... and got a useless low level effect. Now the enchanting labs sit empty in forgotten parts of the world, collecting virtual dust.

I reallty dont see how lowering the maximum level will help the situation much, considering the problem is obviously the minimum level.

Othe rthen that, what others said, a slider for selecting what level of enchantment you want.

I like the idea of being able to improve your weapons with little perks and things from enchanting, but here's a few suggestions on how to improve the system:

Make players level up a bit faster when they get to higher experience levels, that way we don't have to resort to mob grinders and things of the sort for experience. Let it be easy to get higher level enchantments from just playing for a long time instead of making odd traps.

Let enchanting tables be able to "take knowledge" from bookshelves from further away. Standing in a very small, dark, enclosed space to enchant your item isn't really that great of an experience, and it prevents making more creative enchanting rooms.

De-enchantment, possibly? Let's say you have a shovel with Fortune II but you want it on your pickaxe. You de-enchant it (by some means that could be either using the enchantment table, or purging the enchantment from it some other way) and the enchantment goes into an empty bottle, and you can use that bottle to add the enchantment (in this case Fortune II) to the other item of your choosing. The drawback to this is that de-enchantment would most likely break the item you're taking from the enchantment from. Also, if the item has multiple enchantments, it's another gamble to see what enchantment you get, since you can only hold 1 per bottle. (This is just an idea I've had for a while)

Thanks for reading, and just thought I'd say that you're doing an awesome job as the new Minecraft lead dev.

I really don't think lowering the max level is a particularly good idea. Making it a less taxing en devour to get more levels could be the fix. I like the difficulty myself and the reward of getting that high up on levels to get good loot from spending it. Maybe a solution to it is that past a certain amount of experience some of the much lower enchantments are reduced chances but still possible(just like silk touch) so people aren't spending 50 levels and getting Sharpness II.

For me, I think the XP and gambling are okay (though it would be better for better enchantments to be available), but it comes down to the tediousness of getting something of the right level from a table. If one of the choices was always your current level that would go a long way for me.

Otherwise, please don't keep us in non-PvP contexts from getting good enchantments. Perhaps the right approach is to allow the server admins to decide what the correct maximum level would be for their servers.

While I like the idea of getting a random enchantment based on the number, I don't like the idea of picking up and placing back down my item every time I don't get level 50 (takes a LONG time). Please do not lower the good enchantments because they are actually really awesome the way they are. If anything, simply make it a setting in the config file as to the ceiling level of enchantments.

My biggest gripe with it is that upwards of say lvl 20 one of the most likely single enchantment you're going to get on a sword is knock back 2. This is not only fairly useless, but when fighting skeletons and the like it causes me to take more damage.

So add a simple disenchanting option? Simpler than repairing, as diamonds tend to be fairly rare.